Monday, December 19, 2016

Aquarius: Have you read Ta-Nehisi Coates's "My President Was Black"? I'm reading it now; it's a pretty powerful look at all the ways Blackness and authorship, narrative, expectation, self, America, Trump, racism, and power intersect. The usual stuff, these days. Your soul-assignment, Aquarius, is to read the things that challenge you to be outside yourself. If you go angry, read gentle. If you skew easy, read hard. Read things that make you put the book down on the edge of the tub and stare balefully at the floor for a minute. Pile up books beside your bed, tuck them into your bag on your way to work, read after dinner instead of browsing Netflix. Be different people, for a while.

Pisces: One of my friends has this marvelous tradition of buying his friends flowers when they graduate. I love this! It's so thoughtful and sweet, but also lovely because flowers aren't something you're beholden to. You don't have to find them a spot in your kitchen or pack them the next time you move. There's something to be said for ephemeral forms of friendship, you know? Maybe it's time to do a little floating in your own relationships, Pisces. Not get too bogged down in all the stuff.

Aries: The city of Toronto installed bike lanes on Bloor Street this past year, a victory for cyclists who had been asking for the protection for...a decade? More? They went whole-hog, too: nice big plastic bollards and a wide lane for cruisers and speed demons alike. I used to avoid Bloor Street when I was biking, but now, I head towards it, confident that I can have my own slice of the road. A city-sponsored slice, at that. It's kind of an amazing feeling: free, yet insulated. What are the things that you head towards that make you feel that way, Aries? And when was the last time you made the trip?

Taurus: Ancient Icelanders had a lot of different runes, but most of them had to do with the same few basic needs: sleep, warding off enemies, calming strife, healing from injuries. I love the power and mysticism embedded in a few lines, and the ancient runes are still in use today, albeit more often as tattoos and design elements than in actual spell-casting. But wouldn't it be amazing if a few shapes, drawn in dust or blood or snow or sand, had the power to change things, even if only in a few key areas? What runic magic would you invoke, Taurus? What lines would you draw?

Gemini: Over the past few years, my husband and I have bought each other gifts of comfort and caring: bike helmets, sweatpants, cozy clothes. Slipping into something fleecy and warm at the end of a chilly winter's day can be about as good a tonic as a cold glass of water in July, or an early-morning coffee after a tossy-turny night. We often underestimate the power of simple material comfort, like fresh sheets or a favourite shirt, but they can be so powerful in creating just a little bit of softness in a hard day.

Cancer: I bought the baby a book with a finger puppet crab in the middle of it, like a little orange softy poking out of the centre. It's pretty cute, as crabs go. It frolics on the beach, plays in tide pools, naps with its family. I mean, crabs don't really "frolic" or "nap" or whatever...but sometimes it's so nice to feel like even crabs are making decisions and engaging in self-care and just, like, having a nice day, you know?

Leo: The concept of forest schools is one that just fascinates me. Are you familiar with this? Basically, you pay someone a lot of money—like, a lot of money, Montessori-preschool amounts of money—to dress your kids up in rain gear and then go hang out in the forest. Sometimes there's structure, like going to check out a beaver dam or look for mushrooms. Other times, it's self-directed play: kids hanging out with each other, figuring out how to be human beings, together, in the forest. There are no desks, no reading corners, no math lessons. It's just nature. And you know what? It makes me wish that I, too, could attend a forest school. The thought of being out in the trees, on the beach, near the dunes, next to the escarpment, wherever our forest school would be, is so goddamn appealing that I barely have the words for it.

Virgo: Time to start your Fuck Off Fund, my darlings. Whatever is coming your way is going to heavy and mysterious, knocking you right out of your shoes. You need cash money to deal with it: to take the time off work, to make the emergency move, to eat out for a week because your fridge is under a foot of water or encased in ice or something. I hate to be catastrophic, but if you don't have a FOF, you're basically waving a red flag at a bullish universe.

Libra: In the wake of the US election, I've been thinking a lot about Woman Island. Who would I invite to this femme-topia? Solange, obviously. Anjelica Huston. Octavia Butler? Kate McKinnon! The women who surround themselves with undeniable female energy, who are powerfully, undeniably, unapologetically women. I mean, I have no problem with men—they're useful, to a point—but most of them lack that vivacious verve that comes from growing up in a system that either hates you or ignores you and deciding, Fuck it, I'm going to take the wheel anyway. Woman Island, man. Invite only.

Scorpio: We are nearing the winter Solstice, the longest night of the year. Last year on the Solstice, my dad had a stroke, a brain bleed, a metastatic cancer episode, and it was so long, and so dark. He's still here—changed, yes, but present and himself—and the gift of him is all I wanted them and it's all I want now. Dark things happen in the dark, my loves. But the best thing about the Solstice is that it's as bad as it gets. Tomorrow, the day becomes longer, by seconds at first, and then hours. Darkness comes, darkness goes. We'll always have night time, and we'll always have some daylight.

Sagittarius: There comes a point, midway through every single knitting project I start, when I absolutely hate knitting. Doesn't matter if it's a pair of socks or a vest, I'm like I am having the worst time in the whole world, this is so boring and slow. And then I turn on a podcast and I keep knitting, and you know what? It continues to be boring. But at the end of it, I have whatever beautiful project I was working on, all done and blocked and tucked away in a drawer to be pulled out. And every time I pull those things out, I don't remember the tedium; I remember how damned proud I am of the finished project.

Capricorn: Death Valley is a horrible place, pretty much empirically. It's hot, it's barren, it's full of plants that want to stab you death and bugs with far too many legs. But every ten years or so, forces collide and the valley erupts in a "superbloom," a pointillist masterpiece of wildflowers. From a distance, it looks like a haze; these aren't the flashy blooms of, say, a Dutch tulip farm. This are delicate little buds, whose time only comes once in a while. If you're a fan of subtlety in your natural phenomena, make plans to be in places where tiny, hazy miracles happen every so often.